


Paper Flowers

by pepperedfox



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 09:35:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepperedfox/pseuds/pepperedfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary leaves home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paper Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> These are supposed to sound pretentious and pretty. I wrote these out of order, cobbled them together. This is more like a collection of drabbles than anything. There’s no real plot, sorry.

**I.**  
  
By the time the wisterias bloomed she knew the secret name of flowers by heart. Dandelions stood for happiness, day lilies for forgetting. Forget-me-nots were straightforward and honest, but she did not dare step beyond the grave to find them. So many flowers were beyond her reach that she crafted imposters from paper, inky chains of asphodels and rues blotted by the rain in her eyes.

(Outside, the wisterias swayed and the birds sang, but all Mary could see was the silent white bud of her mother’s grave.)

 

**II.**

Mother’s eyes had always been a beautiful shade of red, deep and vibrant as a rose. Since she’d been little, Mary had envied her mother’s eyes. Her own gaze was pale and pink, faded like a summer dress wrung through the wash too many times. Mother laughed when Mary told her so, gently patting her on the head. “Your eyes will bloom in time,” she said.

 

**III.**

Somewhere within the house, a clock struck twelve. Mary, with her ears dulled by her thoughts, did not hear. She placed her fingers against her throat and felt the burn of a rope long ago. Something filled her lungs, a deep and terrifying feeling that squeezed out her breath with its presence. This world was too big, too bright for her. It hurt to look at with her budding eyes and she was shaken with the overwhelming urge to turn back to the darkness, where her paper flowers awaited her.

"Mary!" the boy in white called, but she could not hear him. She was dizzy and weak, and it felt as though her knees would give way at any moment—

 

**IV.**

How long had it been raining? Though the sun shone, the skies had always been overcast in her heart’s eye. The clouds that hung heavy on her eyelids were the ones that locked her inside, rooting her pale legs to storybooks and worn blankets. The outside world could not penetrate the thick veil that she surrounded herself with.

And then she felt it—a warm hand against her ear, a gentle bud pressed into it. Music rang in her ear, high and sweet, piercing through her racing thoughts. The boy in white—no, green now, for he had bloomed into something beautiful—smiled at her, and it felt as though the rain had finally lifted.

"Let’s take it slowly, okay?" he asked. "There’s nothing to be afraid of!"

The world was bright and hot, threatening to burn her. But his smile was soft and warm, like the touch of a mother’s hand against a feverish forehead. Her heart stilled. In the light of his smile, her eyes have blossomed and she could at last see the beauty she hid from for so long with her paper worlds.

She touched the cold and barren gravestone and, with courage, turned her face towards the sun.


End file.
